Brainstorming Features

1. Line Editor UI/UX Features

Brainstorming of ideas about what features would make a line editor and programs that use it best-in-class. I'm interested to see which of these people agree with. These aren't necessarily MVP type ideas and perhaps even greater than 1.0 ideas.

• 1. Line Editor UI/UX Features
  • 1.2. Prompt Features #64
  • 1.3. Completions Features #65
  • 1.4. History Features #66
  • 1.5. Hinting Features #65
  • 1.6. Syntax Highlighting Features #67
  • 1.7. PopUps/PopUnders Features #68
  • 1.8. Keybinding #69
  • 1.9. Miscellaneous #70

1.2. Prompt Features #64

• Ability to have Colors/Styles/Themes
• Ability to have Left Side Prompt
• Ability to have Right Side Prompt
• Ability to have Animated Prompt - Clock, Ansi Spinners like -|/
• Ability to use external prompts like starship or oh-my-posh
• Ability to make prompt extensible

1.3. Completions Features #65

• Ability to works as expected or better
  • File and folder completion
    • zsh-style partial path expansion
  • Environment variable completion $nu.env.A<tab>
  • Table column completion (ls).n<tab>
  • Sub-Command completion str <tab>
  • Other
• Ability to add external completions for things like git
• Ability to make completions extensible

1.4. History Features #66

• Ability to save commands in history
• Ability to save multi-line commands in history
• Ability to traverse backward and forward within history via keybindings
• Ability to search history
• Ability to search history and travese backward and forward within the search criteria
• Ability to have rich data within the history, such as:
  • run time in ms
  • date/time command was ran
  • sessionid of who ran the command assuming multiple sessions
• Ability to have multiple sessions successfull write to history file(s)
• Ability for each session to have it's own history or the appearance of it's own history so within history searching in a single session you only see the commands you created in that session
• Ability to send all commands from all sessions into a global history which search interfaces can use
• Ability to have plugable technologies to make history searching and recall extensible
• Ability to reset history

1.5. Hinting Features #65

• Ability to change the color of the hints
• Ability to create hints from history
• Ability to have plugable hints specific to a vertical
  • Nushell
  • Azure
  • Dataframe/Polars/DataScience
  • Maths
  • Other
• Ability to complete hints with keybinding
• Ability to change location of hints
  • On prompt line
  • Under prompt line
  • On status bar at the top
  • On staus bar at the bottom

1.6. Syntax Highlighting Features #67

• Ability to define word-types to highlight as you type and continue coloring even in failure modes
  • Keywords
  • Commands
  • External Commands
  • Bareword
  • Punctuation
  • Sub-Commands
  • Braces {}, Brackets [], Parentheses ()
  • Error modes
  • Operators
  • Paths
  • Pipe
  • Arguments/Flags
  • Variables
  • Comments
  • DataTypes (strings, int, datetime, duration, bool, units, etc)
  • Other
• Ability to have add things you want syntax highlighted through extensibility

1.7. PopUps/PopUnders Features #68

• Ability to have popups for things like progress bars
• Ability to have popunders, think of this as row(s) under your prompt, to display things like statuses, documentation, or hints
• Ability to have extensibility

1.8. Keybinding #69

• All major functionality should be exposed via keybindings
• Ability to have multiple keybindings
  • VI Mode
  • Emacs Mode
  • JT Mode (the ability to code like JT)
  • Other
• Ability to load keybindings from file
• Ability to execute previously defined code or externals via keybindings
• Ability to have keybinding chords (multiple keyboard shortcuts in succession execute a particular internal or external command)

1.9. Miscellaneous #70

• Validation to trigger multiline on incomplete lines
• Tested behaviour under various environments
  • OSes
  • Terminal emulators: gnome-terminal, iTerm, alacritty
  • Multiplexers: screen, tmux
  • As ssh session
• possible plugins to use file searches and terminal browsers: fzf, skim, broot, zoxide, ranger, etc
• Responsive resizing

This issue is a broad brainstorming list and names no source files, tests, entry points, or acceptance criteria. Review the linked issues #64–#70 to determine whether any specific feature remains actionable; a suitable outcome would need a decided scope and a concrete definition of done.